Gloria, Like Some Other Name
by MarthaJones11
Summary: The Blackwater burns with the victory of Stannis Baratheon. Sansa Stark rises from the ashes.


The Blackwater burns.

Sanasa can feel it through the walls of her chambers. She cannot see, cannot hear, cannot know who currently holds the upper hand in this battle for the heart of Westeros. But she knows that there is fire on the Bay.

Stannis worships the Lord of Light, she thinks as she paces her chambers. Sansa wracks her memory for something learned of this God, some prayer read in a book or a passing comment from Septa Mordane during her younger years. But no, she knows nothing of this God, nothing but His affinity for the flames. Perhaps, she thinks, perhaps this Lord will have pity on all of them and will burn this wretched city to the ground. Perhaps I shall see Winterfell again.

Winterfell.

Sansa allows herself to rest, sitting on the bed and closing weary eyes. Flashes of memory, as far away as the stars that danced overhead and mocked the earthly carnage below, dart through her darkened eyes. She is skipping through the Godswood, she is whispering a prayer into her pillow at midnight, she is plucking a ripened fruit from a bowl and laughing with her brothers over breakfast. More flashes. A long winding road, dreams of traveling South for a tournament, hugging her father, the light breaking across frosty fields with the dawn.

She sleeps. It is moderately peaceful. The Blackwater burns.

* * *

><p>The screaming wakes her. Sansa's eyes dart open. She rushes to the door, stomach clenching in fear. Pressing her ear to the frame, she listens intently, trying to make sense of the madness beyond her walls. So many voices, all expressing the same horrifying sentiment: sheer terror. A single bellowed word makes its way through the chaos, reaching Sansa's ears and rendering meaning before she can process it.<p>

_Wildfire._

Sansa immediately knows she cannot stay locked within the safety of her chambers. There is no safety now. If wildfire has somehow spread to the Red Keep...she shudders, suddenly cold against the heat she knows exists beyond her walls. There is no time. Unthinking, feeling only terror and some pulsing need to survive, Sansa wrenches open her barred door and steps into the flowing chaos in the corridor.

They run like a river rushing from the flames. Men, women, highborn, servants - they all rush, rush, going everywhere, going nowhere, it matters not. Sansa feels the flames through she cannot see them. Heat, heat rising like a sun drawing death in its chariot, ebbs and flows through the madness.

Madness.

The Mad King used to store wildfire beneath the Red Keep, Sansa remembers with a start.

Cersei's words return to her, hissing through the unseen blaze.

_He will not have us._

Sansa's heart stops. She knows, in this moment, that she will never see Winterfell again, will never again rest eyes upon the ancestral home of her fathers. Her feet numbly run across halls as all around her fires rage and pillars of kingship collapse. They are cut from stone and skeletons.

Where are the Gods?

Dead. They dance tonight. They are weary of our mortal games, Sansa thinks. The heat grows. Perhaps the Lord of Light has consumed them all and the Stranger now frolics in the flames that drink deeply of our lives.

Dying is quicker than she had expected.

The ground explodes in front of her footsteps. Stone is strangely, comfortingly cold beneath her bare back. There is a flash of green, a sear of white pain, and a single word that passes through her mind.

_Robb._

Blackness wins. The Red Keep earns it name this night. Sansa burns.

* * *

><p>Sansa thinks she is dead. The night envelopes her. Around, there are muffled cries, the shuffling of feet, deep voices that call for something unheard and certainly unseen. She is deeply troubled. No visions of starlight or silks await her in this afterlife; indeed, it is a reward that feels like the pits of death.<p>

"Lady Sansa Stark."

Is it the Lord of Light? Does he come to break through the darkness of the night of the afterlife? Perhaps it is the voice of the Stranger, she thinks, carrying her from the Seven Hells into the Seven Heavens. Somewhere the Children dance in the pits of her mind, but she cannot think, cannot focus, cannot feel. She floats, she does not respond.

"Lady Sansa," the voice echoes again, rougher, tinged with worry.

It is not the voice of a God, Sansa thinks. Gods do not fear.

She tries to open her eyes. She cannot. They are bound shut. Panic, panic, swirling with the depth of ten thousand burning stars. She chokes on words that die in a scorched throat. Hands too cold to understand and fingers too numb to comprehend fumble at a strip of leather wrapped around her forehead.

Rough fingers with gentle touch pull her shaking hands away from the binding. Things are loud, growing louder, clanging with harshness against her ears. She tries to speak but the words are puffs of smoke and the crying and the screaming and the shuffling and the dying are crashing against her head.

Something cool and slightly bitter is poured down her throat. Milk of the poppy, Sansa realizes as her lips close and her hands fall to her sides. She slips into troubled unconsciousness.

* * *

><p>"Lady Sansa."<p>

The voice is rougher this time, and it jolts Sansa from deep sleep with a sudden wrench. For a split second, she is in Winterfell and has woken from a summer dream.

_Robb._

But it is not her brother, and she still cannot open her eyes, and the voice of the man crashes against her sensitive ears with waves of breaking pain. She turns her head toward the sound of the voice and manages to force a question, through the tightness of her constricted throat.

"What happened?"

There is laughter. It is not malicious. It holds contempt, but not for her, Sansa realizes. It hurts her head.

"Quite a loaded question, My Lady," the man responds. "Know that you are safe now, that King Stannis now sits upon the Iron Throne and that your captors have been justly rewarded."

Perhaps he notices her flinching. His voice softens, but still Sansa feels the shouting and the screaming.

"My Lady..." he begins and trails off, searching for words, Sansa realizes, searching for an explanation that would never come.

She is blind. Strangely, the first thoughts that drift through her mind are not anger, nor sadness, nor worry. She thinks first of Bran, her brother now dead, her brother the climber, her brother the cripple. I am like Bran now, she thinks, the thought drifting through her head like a leaf upon the stream. It is gone before she can ponder it.

Ser Davos Seaworth escorts her from the unfamiliar chambers. He informs her that she has slept for three days. She cannot find the proper response to the Lord Hand's words, so she remains silent. It, too, is deafening as the words that drop, soaked in saltwater and brine, from his lips.

She stumbles over stairs and crooked stones. Davos brings hands to her arms and guides her slowly, patiently. Somewhere, she feels a lack of fingers ghosting on her elbow, but she makes no mention of the lack of perception. She is crippled, too. Still, she knows the steps through the Red Keep.

Davos pauses before answering her questions. He apparently decides that honesty would not hurt her further than her current condition, for which Sansa is silently grateful. The Throne Room is a holdfast for the dead, he says, for the burned and the pierced and the broken...and the dying, he adds, more quietly than the rest.

Sansa cannot manage the stairs at the Tower of the Hand.

The Lord Hand gently suggests an alternative. Sansa nods her approval and Davos lifts her into his arms, taking special care to avoid her injuries, numerous as they mar her skin. It is a silent climb.

She is trembling slightly by the time he places her softly upon the ground once more. The exertion, little as it was, has made her exhausted, and she is cold from the burns and terrified of the King. She raises a shaking hand to smooth the fabric of her dress, fresh but rough fabric placed upon her body by some unseen benefactor as she slept. Davos notes her fear.

"His Grace will not harm you, My Lady," he says, words erupting in her ears.

Sansa nods, unconvinced. Everyone harms her.

* * *

><p>If tempered steel could speak, it would have the voice of Stannis Baratheon, Sansa believes. His words are a swirling storm over grey waters, rough, slightly painful, with a deeply hidden passion of conviction.<p>

"Lady Sansa," he says, and Sansa can hear heavy footsteps upon the floor.

She flinches, partly from pain and partly from fear. The footsteps fall silent. The next words are Stannis Baratheon's attempt at softness. They are as soft as a dying hurricane.

"You are safe now and have nothing to fear, My Lady."

Sansa comes to her senses. The King is speaking to her. The King is dead. Which king lives, which king dies? Robb is in the North. He too is King.

_Robb._

She curtsies. It is clumsy. She stumbles. Two hands catch her roughly, two unbroken and unmarred hands.

"Apologies, Your Grace," she says, casting her face away from the eyes of Stannis Baratheon. She can feel them gazing at her with an intensity she cannot see.

Sansa remembers her father speaking of the Baratheon brother, always with respect in his words. Stannis is an honorable man, her father would say, Stannis is nothing like his brothers. From his words, Sansa often wondered at Eddard Stark's relationship with the late King Robert. Stannis, the honorable, the just, the terrible, the man made of iron and steel and unreadable as the sea under the blackness of night.

Hard fingers were gentle underneath her jaw. If she had eyes to see, Sansa supposed she would be gazing upon the battle hardened face of a King. But she could not see.

The next words to rush upon her pained ears were not unexpected.

"I need to secure the North, Sansa Stark," the King stated. "Your brother remains in open rebellion against the crown. If he accepts my terms of surrender, I will permit him to return to Winterfell to remain Warden of the North."

The man is blunt, Sansa thinks. There is a pause. He expects a response.

"I...my brother is a traitor, Your Grace," she repeats, falling back on dead, meaningless words.

"You are no longer a captive and I am not a Lannister," Stannis snaps, his voice again harsh and grating. "I do not expect you to answer for your brother's actions. I am merely explaining my situation as it pertains to yours."

Somewhere, Sansa understands where their conversation wanders. The far-off realization, something she can observe but not touch, see but not understand, floats away into the darkness. She carries herself after it. Selyse Baratheon had died aboard the ship bearing herself, the Red Priestess, and her daughter. Selyse Baratheon had died. Died. Died without providing a male heir.

_I need to secure the North, Sansa Stark._

Sansa does not feel herself hit the stone floor of the Tower of the Hand.

The Blackwater had burned.


End file.
